Pretty much summed up in the title. Was a shower thought this evening after ordering Thai. I never order rice from a restaurant, always make my own.
What else would you guys consider a similar habit to this?
Edit 1: by cooking I mean rice cooker, stove top, microwave, whatever your personal preference
Quite different. Cooking rice you only ever have to wash one thing which is the rice cooker (unless you use a colander as well which I hope you dont) whereas making stirfry you need to wash your knife, chopping board, frying pan, spatula etc
Wow. Colander shaming?
Using a colander for rice is a travesty. Don't bring shame upon your ancestors.
@Hvrd: You are changing rice into soft, flavourless tiny beans.
The starches you wash off make rice gloopy, allowing it to hold a different texture to the rest of the meal. The starches will hold flavours you boil the rice with. It is a waste of a significant portion of the rice and a waste of water. It can also contaminate the rice if you wash with hot water from an old water heater or cool the rice down if washed with cold water.
@This Guy: Wait what?
It's Japanese tradition to wash the rice first - am I missing something?
Edit: after reading it a few times, are you guys talking about washing rice after cooking it?
@Loopenip: Some people* cook rice the same way they cook pasta - they just throw a random amount of rice into a large pot of boiling water, then drain when finished.
(*heathens)
@sonome: Fock, now it makes sense.
Yes, heathens!
You should use a Colander, but do so for wetting and rinsing the rice before you put it to cook. This is a common habit among people who live all around Asia, just because the rice comes quiet dirty or with other things that might need to be removed. A common occurrence is people/sellers/farmers/companies throwing in white pebbles to increase the weight and reap more profits. It becomes a nuisance in the kitchen.
@Kangal: Why would you rinse raw rice before you cook? What does that acheive?
Do you wash your pasta and steaks before you cook them?
@Chchnu: I guess it more of an Asian thing with food standards not as high as other countries. My parents would always wash meat from the supermarket before using it as there have been a few food scares in the past. Sometimes the water would turn red as some sellers would dye their meat to make it look more palatable/ sell lesser quality meats.
Also rinsing raw rice will reduce the starch in it. Next time you cook rice, try washing it a few times. That murky white water is starch which you have washed away. I find this creates better, less sticky rice.
@AH: Wow, it'd be scary living in a place where you need to be careful with your food. Its like the needle in strawberrys but with everything everyday. Should feel greatfull can walk into coles and grab a pack of meat trusting that its legit with no hormones or fake stuff and not past used by date.
Ill try the washing rice trick next time. So put it on a colander and run hot water over it? Then put the rice in the stove and add boiling water?
Also rinsing raw rice will reduce the starch in it. Next time you cook rice, try washing it a few times. That murky white water is starch which you have washed away. I find this creates better, less sticky rice.
You can get fluffy rice without washing with low heat and longer cooking times.
Rinsing before cooking is good if you want to mix the rice more with the meal. Depends on the style you are cooking, but lower heat and longer cook times is usually better than rinsing.
@Chchnu: Washing the rice greatly improves the texture. It also prevents the water from bubbling over and making a huge mess.
@Hardwood198: You are using too high of a temperature. Rice shouldn't bubble over using a gentle simmer on medium to low heat.
No need to rinse if cooked right.
You can change the texture by changing the ratio of water you use and how long you cook it for.
Things might have changed, but that light fluffy rice that many Asian restaurants make used to be cooked on low heat for ~40 minutes with all of the water boiled off.
You can get close with a ratio of 1:1.5 rice to water by volume (i.e. cups), medium/low heat and 20 to 30 minutes on the stove (depending on how much you are cooking). I prefer a ratio of 1:2, it just takes longer for dry rice (I like rice a little googpy) and needs to be stirred every ten minutes or so to prevent burning.
@This Guy: You should always wash before cooking.
Rice is fumigated in silos to kill bugs.
Same as all legumes
@croc330: The gases used are extremely toxic. Birds have fallen out of the sky if they are exhausted incorrectly from a silo.
And it has happened. EPA then goes and fines them
@daft009: And crops, fruits and vegetables are sprayed with insecticides.
You would need to eat a lot of rice for the concentration to be high enough to cause damage.
@sonome: This is actually the best way to cook rice if you want nice separate non-sticky rice.
It's faster, easier and has less clean up than using a rice cooker. And produces significantly better rice.
Go ahead down vote me.
I can cook rice to the same quality but not the dishes I order.
We buy takeaway without the rice, even if it comes a dollar cheaper..
I just cook my rice in a pot
Yes, I have to put some things in the dishwasher. Stir fry isn't really a high mess sort of dinner, and I tend to have the ingredients required already in the house. Hence why I say if i'm going to cook one thing, I may as well spend less time than driving to the take out store in cooking the rest of the meal. Usually when i'm getting Asian take out, I'm getting Thai, and I want their coconut rice. Plus I'm doing alright, so don't mind throwing another few $ at restaurants who have been getting reemed over the last 18 months.
if you wash up as you go its not a big deal. lets be realistic 'washing up' isn't much more than scraping chunks of food off. the intensity is up to you.
If you are going to cook your own rice you may as well cook the rest of your meal. Boiled rice is only a few $ at most. Why have cooking stuff to clean up for only saving a few $.
Anyway when I get Thai I always get coconut rice (which is absolutely delicious, try it if you haven't), and fried rice if I get Chinese. Coconut rice isn't too hard in a rice cooker but I'm not going to bother making fried rice from scratch.
Few dollars? A small container is like $4 in Melbourne!
Some people must be so good at finding bargains, they have money to burn.
I cannot pay for rice. I cannot pay $2+ for a drink.
Too damn right. I'd drink water over paying $4.5 for a Coke worth $1.5 on sale at Coles!
well, 4 is a few
.
This, and it's not enough. I could easily spend $8 on rice with a meal and even so it's worse than what I make very easily!
With a rice cooker its a 30 second prep and clean activity, so yes, but also no. Hardly the thing.
Rice cookers automatically stop cooking once the rice is cooked and just keeps the rice warm, much more worth it than getting takeaway rice
@Quantumcat: No it doesn't. It literally takes hours to dry out on the "keep warm" setting that all rice cookers have. If you leave it in there switched off, it'll stay great even longer.
@Charmoffensive: If you leave it switched off won't it get cold? Eg if it takes an extra 15 or 30 minutes for your delivery to arrive?
@Quantumcat: it'll stay hot, even when turned off for a good hour or two afterwards because the rice cooker itself is incredibly well insulated, unless you have one of those $10 kmart specials.
@Charmoffensive: Ok that's good to know. Once I put rice in to cook and got distracted and forgot to make my stir fry right away. It was sitting on "warm" for probably an extra 20-25 min and only really the inner third was still good.
Anyway another reason not to cook rice for takeaway - 99% of the time I get takeaway it is on the way home from work, because I'm too hungry or tired to spend the time cooking when I get home. I don't want to let it sit and get cold waiting for 15 min to cook rice and have to wait even longer to eat
@Quantumcat: If you eat rice regularly, you should invest in a good rice cooker. It'll last you a lifetime, and you get amazing quality rice every single time
@Quantumcat: Sounds like you've never used a rice cooker before.. or if you have, its not a very good one. If you eat rice often, invest in a decent rice cooker, preferably an Asian branded one. It will certainly keep the rice hot for up to and probably over an hour after its switched off. If you leave it on keep warn, it'll stay like that forever.. well I wouldnt recommend leaving it on all day as it'll eventually go bad.
FYI for stir fry.. you're actually supposed to use day old rice. Not the ones that are freshly out of the cooker as you'll generally end up with soggy stir fry rice.
@buckethat: Yes I know about day old rice hence I buy fried rice I don't make it.
I think spending a few hundred $ on a very good rice cooker plus the small amount of time to cook and clean it to save $3 is kind of dumb.
Most of the time I eat takeaway it is on the way home from work, where you must agree that cooking your own rice is a dumb idea (letting the food get cold and having to wait to eat, when the reason you got the takeaway is you were too hungry or tired to take the time to cook so the waiting will be extra painful). I might get a delivery once a month at most, probably less. It would take 14 and a half years to break even on this rice cooker which is the first Asian rice cooker I found in deals. And not only would it take forever to break even, but I would have to spend 14.5 hours cooking/cleaning in that time (assuming 5 minutes total prep and cleaning per meal). If I value my time at $50 an hour that's an extra $725 - adding that in basically means you'll never break even (the extra years meaning more cost in time). Oh and ANOTHER thing - I would be stuck eating plain steamed rice every time! If I ever wanted fried rice or coconut rice, that would push out the break even time even further!
I hope you agree that cooking the rice is a dumb idea now that you have seen the maths of it.
@Quantumcat: Ahaha the amount of thought you've put into this. I concede! Yes for your situation, paying a couple bucks for rice certainly is the lesser of two evil.
@Quantumcat: How much time money did you spend working that out and writing that? I say avoid sex as well. That's time you could be earning $50 an hour, more if you charge out in 6 minute intervals.
rice cookers cost at least $20 so you have to order out food a lot to cover the difference.
(sorry if ordering out more then once a month seems like a lot to me)
You can eat rice on other occasions too ;)
Coconut rice! The dream!
do you pay $5 for a bottle of coke with you meal as well?
No, I have cans of soft drink at home.
But who wants to open the fridge when you’re getting take away. If you’re gonna open the fridge you may as well add water and switch on the rice cooker.
yes
Curries yes, never enough rice to soak it all up.
Just eat lettuce for every meal then
Why?
Coz it makes you fart.
Oh wait that's cabbage.
Lettuce is high in carbs. ~50% of it's calories are carbs.
I think carbs are too often demonised. I'm mindful of carb intake too because my work is mostly sedentary, but carbs are great fuel for doing significant physical activity whether walking, cardio, or resistance training.
The problem of course is when we consume more than we need — probably true for most of us!
but carbs are great fuel for doing significant physical activity whether walking, cardio, or resistance training.
You can get lots of healthy carbs by eating veg and a bit of fruit, rather than rice and other grains…
+1 for healthy veg and fruit. That's almost a non-negotiable.
However, I am unsure how good veg and fruit are for more intense physical activity, e.g., before playing a game of footy, running a marathon, hitting heavy weights. I have a sense grains have a place in all that.
FWIW I love "loaded" porridge (e.g., with nuts, seeds, fruit) — great slow burn fuel for workouts.
before playing a game of footy, running a marathon, hitting heavy weights.
That would be very much a minority of Australians these days…
Not sure why you got negged for that comment
Microwave rice?
Is that the packaged stuff? I had heaps of that in Japan, lifesaver.
But here's a tip: handful of rice in a bowl, water level 1 or 2cm above that, cling wrap and chuck in the microwave for 10mins-ish
All rice is microwave rice.
But here's a tip: handful of rice in a bowl, water level 1 or 2cm above that, cling wrap and chuck in the microwave for 10mins-ish
Uncle Roger just put his foot down
Is that a good thing?
Is Roger nicer than Nigel?
@crentist: Honestly Uncle Roger is overrated asf. His first few videos are interesting afterwards it's all the same. Also in terms of cooking, do whatever you want as long as it achieves it's purpose, microwave rice or not. I personally though use a rice cooker. Nothing wrong with using the microwave if it turns out the same.
Hiiiiyaaaaahhh
Sounds like a Jamie Olive Oil method
Buy!
What's the point of 'take away' just to go home and cook. That's not take away! Rice or not… ha!
I look at the $3/portion, and figure that instead of 2 portions I could spend $6 on spring rolls or samosas or something. And then agonize over the optimal balance of spend and effort, which now includes the option of buying rice AND spring rolls
Do you consider the cost of the rice you buy at the supermarket, energy it takes to burn, be that electricity for the rice cooker, gas for the stove and water? Not forgetting time is valuable too…?
$3/ I'm buying, even though there is a couple of hundred dollar rice cooker in the cupboard! Just take too damn long! ha!
My rice cooker costs $20 and my time isn't worth much
Putting rice in the rice cooker isn’t really cooking. It takes about 30secs work, 1min if you want coconut rice. We often put it on then order and pickup, by the time we’re back with the food the rice is done.
Agree if you’re picking something up on the way home, since you want it all to be ready at the same time, but very often we’re already home and go out specifically to pick up takeaway.
Your comment is how I do it.
As other comments already suggest, I would rather spend the 4 - 6 dollars on things like spring rolls, samosas, naan bread etc etc
Probably more than 30 seconds if you're washing the rice properly.
Haha… yes, very true, I am often a bit lazy with the rice washing.
Step 1. Put the rice cooker on
Step 2. Pickup takeaway
Step 3. Enjoy your meal and the knowledge you didn't just throw away hard-earned $$.
edit: Or to put that a totally different way: what Morse said above^
note to self: read all comments before posting to avoid looking foolish
I always have a servings of rice at home anyway. Its just taking it out and reheating.
FRIIIIIIIII RYYYYYYYYYYY
I get the economic arguments for doing it, but if I wanted to cook the rice, I'd just make a stir fry while I'm at it.